Lunch with Margaret Mead

In 1973, Glenn Seaborg, our Nobel Prize–winning Board member, called me from Berkeley, California. He had become chairman of the 1974 conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.

“Ed, I’ve got an idea,” Glenn began ominously. I say “ominously” because I had learned to worry when someone came to me with an idea. It generally meant more work for me, and that proved to be true in this case.

Glenn wanted me to organize a session on the future for the AAAS meeting. I didn’t like this idea one bit because I knew it would consume considerable time and money that neither I nor the Society could afford to lose. Furthermore, I had never organized a session for a meeting of scientists and doubted my ability to do it.

But I couldn’t say no to Glenn, who had done so much for us, so I quickly agreed. Once committed, I had to think how one goes about organizing a session for the world’s most prominent scientific society. Since I lived in the Washington area, I went to the headquarters of the AAAS to ask for guidance, but I couldn’t seem to get much practical help. So I plunged ahead on my own by making up a list of noted futurists and just calling them up to ask if they would be willing to participate in a session at the AAAS conference.

I first invited Roy Amara, president of the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, California, to chair the futurist session, since it would be easy for Roy to come to a meeting in San Francisco. I did not want to preside myself, because I wanted to tape-record and photograph the event in order to report on it for THE FUTURIST.

Happily, Roy Amara was willing, and I was also able to recruit Theodore Gordon, president of the Futures Group; Willis W. Harman of Stanford Research Institute; biophysicist John Platt; and Glenn Seaborg himself to speak at the session. Inviting Glenn was a kind of payback for making me do so much extra work!

I also sent an invitation to the legendary anthropologist Margaret Mead, because I knew she was president of the AAAS that year and might be at the San Francisco meeting. She was not a member of the World Future Society, but judging from her writings and speeches, I believed she was very interested in the future and always seemed to have interesting things to say. But she did not respond to my invitation.

The new San Francisco chapter of the World Future Society arranged an elegant reception and luncheon to be held just before the symposium. I was amazed by the initiative of the San Francisco chapter and found the event most enjoyable.

While I was talking to people at the reception, someone came up and told me that Margaret Mead was looking for me. Though quite startled, I quickly located her in the crowd, and we were soon chatting like old friends. Mead was a small woman, though plump, so I was quite amazed when she downed two sizeable highballs while we talked. Then we went together to what proved to be a very pleasant lunch; John Platt sat across the table from us but entered into our conversation occasionally. At the end of the meal, I expected to conduct Mead to the hall where our session was to be held, but Glenn Seaborg came over and started asking me questions about his presentation. While my attention was diverted, Mead disappeared without saying a word, and I had no idea where she had gone. I had miffed her — a blunder that I still regret.

When I arrived at the meeting hall, Mead was nowhere in sight. The other speakers milled around the speakers’ table as the crowd assembled, and it really was a crowd. Some 500 people packed into the room, making it one of the biggest sessions at the conference.

Amara started the program on schedule, and the presentations proceeded smoothly and uneventfully until he began bringing the session to a close, noting that Margaret Mead had been expected but had not arrived.

Suddenly, a murmur arose from the crowd!

“Oh, is she here?” exclaimed Amara.

Mead had been sitting unnoticed in the midst of the hundreds in the audience. At last she came forward and placed herself at the microphone. She then proceeded to give a forceful talk, despite — or perhaps because of — the two highballs, and quickly disappeared again into the crowd. I never saw her again, but I had successfully recorded her talk on tape, and we published it (with her corrections) along with the other presentations in THE FUTURIST (June 1974).